BEIRUT, Lebanon — A decade after American journalist Austin Tice disappeared in Syria as the country descended into a brutal civil war, and who has reportedly been held captive by the government of President Bashar al-Assad ever since, his release remains elusive.
While one of his employers says efforts to secure his freedom are gaining momentum, his family remains unconvinced that the Biden administration is doing enough to push the Syrian government, in part because of diplomatic complications resulting the lack of formal relations between the United States and Syria.
McClatchy, the American news company for which the journalist worked, among others, said this week that a multinational effort to free Mr. Tice showed signs of recovery and that there had been direct contacts between the American governments and Syrian.
A spokeswoman for McClatchy said Monday the progress was the culmination of intense activity by the Biden administration and the journalism industry leading up to the 10th anniversary of Mr. Tice’s disappearance. But the company’s chief executive, Tony Hunter, also said recently that there hasn’t been much movement on the issue since May.
“For McClatchy, this anniversary was an opportunity to shed some light on Austin’s decade-long predicament,” spokeswoman Susan Firey said. “And, in tandem, to shine a light on the inaction of three administrations for a decade.”
Last week, Debra and Marc Tice, parents of Mr. Tice, who disappeared in August 2012 outside Damascus, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which they noted family marriages, graduations and other family gatherings their son had missed. in 10 years of captivity, and urged President Biden to step up diplomatic efforts to free him.
The Tice family did not respond to interview requests.
The United States has ‘extensive engagement’ to bring Mr. Tice back to the United States, including contacting Syrian officials directly and working through third parties, according to a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject. Case. However, the official said the Syrian government had not yet agreed to discuss Mr. Tice’s case.
Mr. Biden said in a statement last week that his administration had repeatedly asked the Syrian government to work with them to bring Mr. Tice home.
“On the tenth anniversary of his abduction, I call on Syria to put an end to this and help us bring him home,” Biden said in the statement, adding that the United States was certain. that the journalist was detained by the Syrian government. .
Mr. Biden said his administration had no higher priority than the release of American hostages and those wrongfully held abroad.
If still alive, as the United States believes, Mr. Tice, a former Marine Corps infantry officer who was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, would be one of the longest-serving American hostages. held overseas, a captivity that spanned three U.S. administrations. He would have been 41 on August 11.
Mr. Tice, who was a freelancer for the Washington Post as well as McClatchy and other outlets when he was abducted, had been in Syria for months, embedding himself and writing about opposition rebels while an anti-government uprising turned into a civil war. Syria has long maintained that it does not hold Mr. Tice and has no information about him.
Efforts to secure his release have been complicated by the fact that the United States has suspended diplomatic relations with Syria following the Assad regime’s brutal crackdown on dissent.
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Mr. Tice’s parents met Mr. Biden at the White House on May 2, where he ordered his top national security officials to engage directly with the Syrian government, according to the article they wrote. in the Washington Post.
Weeks after that meeting, Lebanese security chief Abbas Ibrahim came to Washington and met with Biden administration and CIA officials, according to Nizar Zakka, president of Hostage Aid Worldwide. His organization has been helping Mr. Ibrahim and the United States for two years to find leads on Mr. Tice, he said.
The purpose of the meeting was to find a way to make advances to Syrians, who have always been evasive when asked about Mr. Tice, Mr. Zakka said.
Mr. Ibrahim has been credited with brokering the release of several Westerners from the Middle East, including an American and a Canadian from Syria, as well as Mr. Zakka, a Lebanese national held for four years in Iran and accused of espionage. on behalf of the United States. .
After meeting in Washington, Ibrahim traveled to Damascus and met with Syrian officials, but the meeting came to nothing, Zakka said.
The Tice family still demands direct contact between the Biden administration and the Syrian government, dismissing alleged State Department concerns about high-level recognition of Mr. al-Assad.
In 2014, Debra Tice spent nearly three months in Damascus “knocking on doors, making phone calls, doing everything she could to find out where Austin was.” Eventually, she received a message from a senior Syrian government official: “I will not meet the mother. Send a United States government official of the appropriate title.
The US government has made many efforts over the years to secure Mr. Tice’s release, largely under President Donald J. Trump, who has made the release of US prisoners and hostages held around the world a priority. .
In 2017, during the first year of Mr. Trump’s administration, the White House set up a secondary channel to communicate with the Syrian government. In February of the same year, Mike Pompeo, then director of the CIA, spoke on the telephone with Ali Mamlouk, the head of the intelligence service of the Syrian National Security Office, which is the subject of American sanctions.
The administration then sent an intermediary to meet Mr. Mamlouk and deliver an unsigned letter from the US government. Those communications collapsed after the Syrian government carried out a chemical gas attack in rebel-held northern Syria and the United States responded with a missile strike on a Syrian airfield.
In August 2018, a senior CIA agency official specializing in the Middle East met with Mr. Mamlouk in Damascus and raised Mr. Tice’s case.
Two years later, high-level US officials, including Roger D. Carstens, the State Department’s special envoy for hostage affairs, again met with Mr. Mamlouk in Damascus to try to secure his release. of Mr. Tice and another American citizen, Majd. Kamalmaz, a Syrian-born psychotherapist who was taken to a checkpoint in 2017.
The Syrian government has also not admitted to holding Mr. Kamalmaz.
Months after the meeting, a US official said efforts to secure the two men’s release were in their early stages.
The reliance on such secondary channels and intermediaries due to the lack of US diplomatic relations with Syria has made these efforts very complicated. The United States closed its embassy in Damascus in 2012, then in 2014 the Syrian embassy in Washington and suspended diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The United States has also imposed sanctions on Syrian military and political leaders for human rights abuses, as well as on Syrian businesses and banks.
In the op-ed they wrote, Mr Tice’s parents called the obstacles cited by US administrations an “apology”. They welcomed Mr Biden’s words of encouragement, but said their son needed more than that after 10 years in captivity.
“He needs our government to turn the president’s words into action,” they wrote. “He has to go home.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed report.